Five elderly women in China have dedicated their lives to the care of nearly 1,300 stray dogs. The enterprising women run their very own custom dog asylum, where they feed the lucky canines 400 kg of tasty dog-food every single day.

The shelter, located in China’s central Shaanxi Province, was established in 2009 by 60-year-old Wang Yanfang. She said that she felt sympathetic towards strays that were taken away by regulators, so she decided to apply for permission to open the asylum, solely supported by donations.

Since then she has gained the support of four other women, and together they wake up at 4am each morning just to prepare food for the dogs. They are so dedicated to the cause that they even chose to forgo the extravagant display of fireworks on New Year’s Eve, and instead spent the day with the abandoned dogs.

According to one of the ladies, the job comes with its own set of risks. The dogs are not always friendly – they sometimes bite their caretakers. But that has not deterred the women from continuing their service. “They’re like your children, you can’t bear to be apart from them, or to lose them,” Wang said.

Luckily for China’s huge stray dog population, these kindhearted women are not alone in their struggle to offer them a better life. A few years ago, we wrote about Ha Wenjin, an animal lover who sold her house and all of her jewelry to take care of 1,500 dogs and 200 cats, and Grandma Bai, a 66-year-old woman from Chongqing, who has dedicated the last 17 years of her life to hundreds of stray dogs and cats.

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